We are happy to announce the immediate availability of our first carbon neutral printing initiative. For our new edition of the Divine Light Invocation, we at Timeless decided to work with Hemlock, a company in Burnaby who received the International 2008 Heidelberg Eco Printing Award for Most Sustainable Printing Company.Of course the cost of the printing was almost 50% more than normal. We were hesitant. Was carbon neutral printing really what was needed and was the market ready for such a change? In order to see if it was viable and whether there was interest in this venture, Timeless contacted its community members to see if they would support such an idea. To our surprise we raised the extra amount associated with the cost of going carbon neutral in less than 24 hours. Because of you, our donors, we can now offer a completely carbon neutral book as proof that our readers care about how we print books. Thank you!

What does a carbon neutral book mean? This sounds like a paradox as we still have to cut down trees to print books. This meant we had to go an extra mile. At Timeless we believe that being carbon neutral is more than offsetting our carbon emissions. Simply paying someone to take care of our carbon emissions is a good start, but we were looking for more. When researching printers who would fit our ideals, we discovered Hemlock. They provided a lot of information on the environmental benefits of taking the carbon neutral route, and and as a business the company is committed to environmental sustainability. From installing a white roof (the benefits), to providing a biodiesel delivery truck, reducing their water discharge, and providing credit for their sales team to use hybrid cars, Hemlock does a lot more than simply offset carbon. They are also the first printer to sign the Markets Initiative’s Ancient Forest Friendly agreement pledging to eliminate ancient forest sourced fiber from supplies. By working with Hemlock, we are saving 8 fully grown trees, 12,618 liters of water, 3, 000, 000 b.t.u. of energy, reducing 92 kg of waste and eliminating 312 kg of greenhouse gases. This is one way we can contribute to respecting our environment, using only what is needed, and conserving resources and energy.

Another area we are experimenting with is the print-on-demand industry. We will be republishing some of our older titles with print-on-demand technology. Print-on-demand creates a book only when someone needs it. When we were printing ascent magazine, almost 75% of the magazines were destroyed because the newsstand wouldn’t recycle them due to copyrighted material. So now instead of creating thousands of books for printout, the publishing industry can rely on a system that produces only for the needs of the consumer. In that sense it helps a lot to reduce waste.

When it was time to re-print Time to be Holy, we were faced with the fact that a traditional print-run of one or two thousand copies would last us 15 years or more as an inventory item. In this ever evolving printing industry we decided to wait before re-publishing this title then we realized that print-on-demand was the perfect channel to publish our ‘out of print’ titles. The new re-print for Time to be Holy will arrive soon with the new cover that you see above. We are now working on In the Company of the Wise!

And of course we continue our digital distribution, with all of our CD’s on iTunes and digital download and soon we will also have our Timeless titles as PDF downloads for ease of searching, providing accessibility to the Teachings wherever you are.

We would like to thank you again for your support in making these initiatives possible. We are always looking for new ways to support the teachings while reducing our ecological footprint. Be sure to visit our newly designed site timeless.org – and get a copy of our latest titleOn Sanyas.